Below is an interview with David Helgason of Unity Technologies. Unity is a game development tool that works with multiple platforms, including the Wii and iPhone. The company recently releases a free-to-use version of their software.

Could you tell us a little bit about yourself and your background? What do you do at Unity Technologies?

My name is David Helgason, one of the three founders of Unity Technologies’ and CEO.

For people that don’t know, what does Unity do? What are some examples of Unity projects/games that we might know about?

Unity is a powerful game engine and a flexible tool to build 3D content.

Now there’s nothing very exciting about that fact per se, game engines are a dime a dozen. But Unity has two objectives, 1) on making game development really easy and fast for a very large number of people (instead of going the traditional “call us to find out how much it costs” we’ve always worked with affordable per-seat licensing), and 2) enabling the games (and other things) they build to work on not just a few high end gaming computers and consoles, but a billion web browsers and mobile phones. That’s a sort of democratization at both ends, and has attracted tens of thousands of developers to the community around Unity.

Unity has been used for really big browser games like Electronic Arts’ Tiger Woods PGA Tour flagship title and Cartoon Network’s FusionFall MMO, over 350 iPhone games and FaceBook games. But also thousands of other projects, including award winning indie games, art projects, architecture and, product and medical visualization applications. For example, we’ve just discovered that North Carolina State University is using the tech to simulate the surroundings of crime scenes. We put these really powerful tools out there and thousands of smart developers from all walks of life are doing incredible things.

The big announcement recently was not only the release of Unity 2.6, but also that you had decided to drop the $199 charge for the Indie license. Can you explain why you decided to do this considering how popular Unity already is? Is it just a case of, as we suggested in our coverage, that the Pro and console licenses are where you make your money and a free version will encourage more upgrades?

Any good geek who’s created a wonderful piece of software must be tempted to give it away for free, it just seems right. We’ve dreamt about doing this for years, but were never confident that it wouldn’t hurt our business. But over time Unity Pro, Unity iPhone, and our other high-end offerings formed almost 90% of our revenue, so as we are profitable the previous $199 product became less important financially.

Then we realized that a strong developer community benefits everyone. Sure there’ll be upgrades, but even if these were not to make up for the lost revenue all these developers will be becoming part of something bigger, some of them will share their knowledge in the community, and a few will innovate new uses for Unity, share or sell important add ons to Unity, or otherwise do awesome things that we can’t predict.

And truly, the influx of new users has multiplied and even though it’s early days since we made the $199 product free all indicators are that this will be a step change for Unity.

Made with Unity

Unity provides any developer with a solid 3D engine on which to develop a game, but there is also a market out there for 2D game development. GarageGames have actively embraced that with its forthcoming Torque 2D game engine and current Torque Game Builder while GameSalad has just released its 2D solution for the iPhone. 2D on Unity is possible at the moment, but by using the 3D engine. Is there any possibility that Unity 2D may appear in the future?

People are already doing lots of 2D and 2.5D content with Unity, and in lieu of Unity 2D there are some great libraries being shared by the community which make Unity very competitive for 2D games. We’ve also got some great new stuff in the pipeline which we can announce in the near future.

Unity currently supports PC, Mac, Web, iPhone, and Wii platforms,and work is currently under way to support Xbox 360 too. Are there plans already in place to support other platforms (like Android) in the future? Is it community demand that decides what platform you will target next?

The simple answer is that yup, we are very excited about mobile and working on several ports inside the company. As for who decides, it’s a combination of the community and the marketplace. Unity’s sweet spot is big developer communites and an open or semi-open ecosystem like the web or the iPhone. There isn’t currently “another iPhone”, but Android is emerging as a credible contender.

Is the Unity engine Unity Technologies only focus or are there other areas you are pursuing?

We believe that a startup should be a one-product company, and it’ll be a long time before we’d even consider creating another product. However we are working on some really cool ways to really broaden the scope of Unity, so watch this space.

What do you see happening in the mobile sector with games development? iPhone and iPod touch seems to have really opened up the market and reinvigorated things. Do you think this is set to continue or are we reaching saturation point on the App Store? How do you think other platforms can and will react?

I think that the AppStore showed us how willing people are to buy content once the accessibility of the whole experience is great. So everyone is scrambling to replicate it. There’ll be lots of casualties on the way, but our belief is that every platform will have an AppStore.

Unity is clearly proving popular among indie developers, but you also have some big publishers on your books, with EA being an example. Is Unity Technologies going to remain strictly independent or is there a chance someone like EA could swoop in to acquire you?

We are happy with EA as a customer, but I don’t think that a publisher acquisition would be the right thing. Unity’s value is really only unlocked in a broad, open marketplace, not under the control of one big publisher.

We just raised $5.5M from Sequoia Capital, a VC firm which invests on a long timeframe. We’re entirely aligned and believe that our vision is a really sound one and valid for the long term.

A lot of people out there have the ideas, but not the skills to make a game. What course would you recommend for someone that wants to get into indie game development as a hobby?

With Unity you really only need smarts and dedication to build games and other interactive 3D productions for the web or mobile. Without a varied set of skills you maybe won’t make the next AAA title, but people make do with their own skillsets or build small teams and get great things done. The traditional idea of what a game is will change rapidly in the next few years as more people realize that tools like Unity can do most of the technical stuff. People will use the knowledge and creativity they have – different art styles, topics and mechanics will appear. Unity is the ideal starting place for someone who wants to have a go at making a game – we have people doing that all the time. Maybe initially they make a version of something they are familiar with, just so they can concentrate on the process and familiarize themselves with the tools. After that they can begin to translate their own ideas into a game. Experimentation is key – I’d encourage anyone who has an idea to just try it out.

And particularly with Unity, there’s a big community of highly skilled people to tap into – people who will support, share and help – it’s a very giving environment.

How far away are we from drag-and-drop, anyone-can-do-it game building? Is it ever going to happen? Is this a goal of Unity?

Our goal is to be a professional and enabling tool, and in order not to merely be a toy we’ve spent a lot of effort on power and flexibility.

Now that highly professional teams have already adopted Unity we are focusing broadly, and it turns out that designed right something that simplifies a process for a beginner can also shave a few important seconds for a battle scarred professional. So far we’ve only dipped a toe in this and there’s so much more that can be done.